


Curveball

by china_shop



Series: Trading Places [4]
Category: White Collar
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Character Swap, F/M, Fic, Puppies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-15
Updated: 2012-08-15
Packaged: 2017-11-12 04:33:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/486739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/china_shop/pseuds/china_shop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Hi," said Elizabeth, tucking a strand of red hair behind her ear. "You know, you're the first person to ask me out since I got out of prison. I thought I was losing my touch."</p><p>Peter snorted. "You don't say."</p><p>"Well, except for Marcus Fiametta, but I don't think it counts if they shoot you afterwards."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Curveball

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for 3.15. Gets a bit expositiony, but whatcha gonna do? Also, this might be the last in this 'verse for a while, because recapping's about to take hold of my soul again. Thanks to mergatrude for being awesome.

Peter came late to the FBI, after he hurt his knee and his burgeoning baseball career crashed down around his ears. He had surgery and spent a couple of years strengthening the torn ligament and getting over the disappointment, took the FBI physical and went to Quantico, and then somehow managed to secure a much-coveted position working for Clinton Jones on the New York White Collar team. That was that, his history in a nutshell.

He was nearly a decade older than many of the other agents, including some that outranked him, and while he didn't really mind, it inevitably led to a kind of distance with his peers. They'd head out to a bar after work, and he'd just want to go home and put his feet up. They were excited about the latest iGadget while he was still figuring out his phone. (He _could_ learn technology as quickly as the rest of them -- he just didn't care enough to put the time in.) They were the ColdPlay generation; he still listened to Springsteen.

The puppy made it better and worse. Now he had to go straight home, but at least he had someone to go home to. In only a few weeks, Satchmo had turned his home life upside down: shoes and the TV remote were chewed, a college photo album destroyed, blond puppy fur on all his clothes and kibble scattered across the kitchen floor. They went to puppy training two nights a week, where Peter and Satchmo were both starting to make friends, they played ball, and they watched a lot of old movies on late-night TV.

Satchmo was supposed to sleep in the laundry, but he'd ignored that restriction, invading first the bedroom, then the bed itself. Peter hadn't the heart or the energy to evict him. Besides, it was nice having him curled up at the foot of the bed, snuffling to himself. It brought the old place to life.

Peter had bought the house in Vinegar Hill as soon as his baseball career tanked. There'd been a girl then, Amanda, tall, beautiful and ambitious. Peter had half-expected they'd get married eventually, have the kind of comfortable, normal life his parents shared, but she'd had other plans. She wanted to travel, experience more of the world, she said. She left for India just before their third anniversary, about a month after Peter applied to Quantico. But Peter liked the house and the neighborhood, so he stayed there, rattling around its sparsely furnished rooms, and now there was Satchmo, scrambling up and down the narrow staircase, skidding after his toys on the polished wood floors, going into a frenzy whenever he caught sight of his leash. Now it was a home.

 

*

 

The night of the Fiametta bust, Peter got a beer and collapsed onto the couch to think. Satchmo danced back and forth with a rubber chew toy in his mouth, but Peter was tired and a little bit worried that he was getting in over his head. He'd invited Elizabeth Mitchell over that weekend. 

She'd visited Satchmo a couple of times before, of course, but both times it had been her idea, imposed upon him with an airy disregard for his wishes. That had allowed Peter to object before heaving a sigh and accepting the inevitable, and the objection and the long-suffering sigh had been part of an important ritual, keeping a distance between them. He'd broken the ritual. 

There was no point pretending he wasn't attracted to her. She was beautiful and brilliant, and she had her own agenda. She was a con artist; she should have been hollow and selfish and calculating, but she wasn't any of those things. She always fit in, because that was her MO, but underneath that, she was strong and driven and mischievous and unexpectedly kind. And she seemed curious about him, as if she saw a mystery that other people didn't, a puzzle to be solved. 

It was her strength and independence that really caught his attention, that paradoxically made him protective of her, instinctively, undeniably... problematically. 

Peter groaned and rubbed his eyes. He'd deal with it. He'd repress it. He'd ignore it till it went away. Even if she weren't completely untrustworthy, they worked together and he outranked her. Nothing would or could happen. Nothing. Or, well, maybe they could be friends. Friends would be okay.

A slight shifting pressure moved across his toes, and when he looked down, Satchmo was licking his shoe.

 

*

 

The doorbell rang at two-thirty on Saturday, and Peter answered it with a tea towel in one hand, the other hand on Satchmo's collar, deliberately casual. 

Apparently they were in synch in that regard: Elizabeth was wearing a yellow Tweety-Bird t-shirt, jeans and sneakers. The only jarring note was her synthetic red shoulder-length wig. She was carrying a white box that smelled of pastries, and she immediately thrust it into Peter's hand and dropped to her knees to greet Satchmo. "Hello, baby. You miss me?"

"Would you come inside?" said Peter, and somehow maneuvered them all into the house so he could close the door. 

Elizabeth barely seemed to notice, she was so absorbed with the wriggling, licking, tail-wagging bundle of puppy, but eventually she looked up to find Peter watching, still holding the pastry box. "Hi," she said, tucking a strand of red hair behind her ear. "You know, you're the first person to ask me out since I got out of prison. I thought I was losing my touch."

Peter snorted. "You don't say."

"Well, except for Marcus Fiametta, but I don't think it counts if they shoot you afterwards."

"I hate to be the one to burst your bubble, but this doesn't count either," said Peter firmly. "This is a play date with a puppy."

Elizabeth's eyes widened in fake dismay. "Awwww, no smooches? But I bought strudel."

Peter's cheeks heated, but he kept his voice steady. "Play your cards right, you might get a cup of coffee. That's it."

"Meanie," said Elizabeth. She caught Satchmo and rubbed his ears. "He's a big meanie, isn't he? Aww, look at you, you're adorable."

Peter shook his head and left them to it. He put the pastries in the kitchen and went out onto the patio to read a book, which turned out to be nowhere near as engaging as the blurb had promised. When he went to check on them half an hour later -- because valuables or not, he couldn't relax with a thief running loose in his house -- Elizabeth was lying on the floor, telling Satchmo a story about a mysterious thief called Pierre. She radiated carefree contentment and could have passed for sixteen, easy. Her t-shirt was riding up a little, revealing a strip of skin above her jeans waistband, and just looking at her made Peter feel like a pervert, so he went to put the coffee on and talk himself down.

A crash from the living room sent him hurrying back to find the coffee table upended, magazines and newspapers spilling across the floor, and Elizabeth and Satchmo looking equally sheepish. It was far less disastrous than it had sounded, so Peter just grinned. "Coffee's ready."

"Oooh, _apfelstrudel_ ," said Elizabeth, jumping to her feet.

Satchmo barked hopefully.

"Nope, no strudel for you," said Peter.

"Told you he was a meanie." Elizabeth patted Satchmo sympathetically and scampered into the kitchen, where she made herself at home, arranging pastries on a plate and pouring coffee. Peter folded his arms and leaned on the door jamb, feeling ousted and self-conscious.

"Sugar?" said Elizabeth, and spooned some into his cup before he could say no. "You know, I still haven't had a chance to teach you how to cheat at poker."

"Some other time," said Peter, unwilling to commit himself to being the focus of her attention for any length of time right now. He sipped his coffee cautiously. He hadn't taken sugar since he was a teenager, and the sweetness made him feel like a kid again.

Apparently too impatient to sit down at the table like a civilized adult, Elizabeth was already chewing her way through a pastry. There was a smudge of sugar on her chin. Peter tightened his hands around his mug and focused on her hair. That, at least, was fake and unappealing.

"Mmm, ohhh, I needed that," she said, and licked her fingers. "I've been _craving_ strudel." He raised his eyebrows, and she shrugged. "The best bakery's outside my radius. It's on the way here, though."

"So that's why you came over." Peter's disappointment was cut with relief. "Happy to provide an opportunity."

"That's one of my motives, oh Burke of the reductive reasoning." A teasing smile played across Elizabeth's face. "Don't forget the Satchmo. Puppies are always a good lure."

On the other side of the door, Satchmo let out a plaintive whimper at the sound of his name.

"Mmhmm." Peter wasn't willing to be drawn on the implication that he'd lured her here. He took a pastry and bit into it, its sweet, spicy richness melting on his tongue. His eyes fell shut instinctively, allowing him to savor it. Damn, that was good pastry. He licked his thumb and glanced up, caught her staring, her even white teeth biting into her lower lip. 

"That said," she added, "it's a great disappointment to me that 'play date with Satchmo' wasn't a euphemism." 

Peter swallowed his next mouthful before he accidentally choked on it, but only just. "It's not."

Satchmo's whimper had escalated into a full-scale whine now, whether because he was feeling left out or because he could smell the strudel, Peter didn't know. Peter turned to rebuke him for scrabbling his blunt puppy claws against the kitchen door, just as Elizabeth said, "You sure about that?"

When he turned back, her wig was gone, her own hair curling messily about her shoulders. She looked her age again, utterly desirable and oddly vulnerable with it. It had to be a con.

"Mitchell--" said Peter in much the same tone he'd just used on the puppy.

"Peter--" she replied, mocking him. 

The shock of his name on her lips robbed him of breath, and then she laid her hand on his bare forearm, and all his higher brain functions shut down. The knowledge that she'd probably planned this, that she was openly manipulating him meant nothing more than that she really did want him, here and now, for whatever reason. He let the last of his strudel fall to the floor unheeded and boosted her up onto the kitchen counter so they were more or less eye to eye, and she grabbed him by the shirt and hauled him in and kissed him, tasting of apple, cinnamon and coffee. Her hair was soft and real under his fingers, constrained only by a few haphazard hairpins, and she kissed with a closed-eyed full-bodied enthusiasm that made him groan and pull her hard up against him. She responded by wrapping her legs around his hips and her arms around his neck, as if they were both caught in an avalanche of need and momentum, no use fighting it even if they wanted to, and screw it, everything had been leading to this from the moment Peter had said he'd take the damned puppy.

Her hands dragged across his back under his shirt, and he loosened his hold a little so he could explore her curves, cup her full breasts, Jesus, he couldn't remember the last time he'd wanted anyone like this, like madness or a fever. He licked down the side of her neck, nuzzled into the angle there and she was reaching for his waistband, they were going to do this, here in his kitchen, him and Elizabeth Mitchell, renowned con artist and art thief, seductress and felon.

Something bumped against his leg, and he came to his senses enough to register that Satchmo was barking, had somehow wormed his way into the kitchen and was dancing around them in high excitement. 

The kitchen, the coffee, the ordinary Saturday afternoon all rushed back in. His badge upstairs on the nightstand. Peter caught Elizabeth's hands to halt their progress, took a deep breath and stepped back. "I can't."

For a second, Elizabeth looked stricken, or maybe Peter imagined it, projecting what he wanted to see. She closed her eyes, pulled free of him and ran her fingers through her hair, causing a couple more hair pins to rain onto the counter and the floor, and when she opened her eyes, she was composed: still flushed, but wry now, a little cynical. She slid down from the counter and scowled at Satchmo. "You are officially no longer my favorite puppy."

"I could lose my job," said Peter, trying to explain and apologize at the same time.

"Yeah, I don't--" Elizabeth shrugged, avoiding his eye. "This was a mistake."

"Yeah." There was nothing else to say to that. "My fault."

"I should go." She straightened her t-shirt and left, telling Satchmo to "Stay!" and Peter stood in his kitchen and listened to the front door shut behind her.

The house felt crushingly empty then. He shifted, adjusted himself with a grimace and stepped back, not sure what to do, and something crunched underfoot. Hairpins. He bent and gathered them together before Satchmo mistook them for food. The morsel of fallen strudel was already gone, no surprise there. Peter straightened to put the handful of pins on the counter and froze at the sight of the red wig, crumpled and forgotten by the microwave, along with a piece of stocking fabric. Discarding the wig -- had that been a concession on Elizabeth's part, a calculated move to get under his skin? How did she know he preferred her without, was he that transparent? Had she left it behind on purpose?

"Dammit." He folded his arms on the counter and hung his head, aching with regret, wishing Satchmo hadn't interrupted or that his own conscience hadn't kicked in. Wishing they'd done it, frantic and hot, and that she was still here, laughing at him, with that wide, open grin and those brilliant blue eyes that saw everything. 

 

END


End file.
